There are so many ways to say happy birthday – even once you’ve decided you’ll say it with a poem. So here are some birthday verses for all kinds of celebrations, covering friendship, growing older, motherhood, fatherhood, and just the joy of embracing a chance to down some bubbly beverages.
You’ll find several of these poems in our new personalised poetry anthology, Poems For You. After five minutes of picking poems, typing a title and penning a personal intro, you’ll have a unique gift for any occasion.
The Five Reasons by Henry Aldrich
If all be true that I do think,
There are Five Reasons we should drink;
Good Wine, a Friend, or being Dry,
Or lest we should be by and by;
Or any other Reason why.
Fill the Goblet Again (extract) by Lord Byron
Thou grows old – who does not? – but on earth what appears,
Whose virtues, like thine, still increase with the years?
The Throstle (extracts) by Alfred Lord Tennyson
‘Summer is coming, summer is coming.
I know it, I know it, I know it.
Light again, leaf again, life again, love again.’
Yes, my wild little Poet.
‘Here again, here, here, happy year’!
O warble unchidden, unbidden!
Summer is coming, is coming, my dear,
And all the winters are hidden.
Sonnet 30 (final two lines) by William Shakespeare
…if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor’d, and sorrows end.
To My First Love, My Mother (extract) by Christina Rossetti
To her whose heart is my heart’s quiet home,
To my first Love, my Mother, on whose knee
I learnt love-lore that is not troublesome;
Whose service is my special dignity,
And she my lodestar while I go and come.
And so because you love me, and because
I love you, Mother, I have woven a wreath
Of Rhymes wherewith to crown your honoured name
A Birthday Wish by John Imrie
Birthday greetings now I send,
Full of gladness, love, and joy,
May this year, my loving friend,
Bring thee peace without alloy;
Keep this token as a charm.
Proof of Friendship ever dear,
Fain would I shield thee from harm
All this happy golden year!
To My Friends (extract) by John Imrie
…all along life’s rugged way
The smile of friendship crowns the day,
And hearts are young though heads be grey : —
Friends never part!
A Song of Other Days (extract) by Oliver Wendell Holmes
‘Tis nature’s law that wine should flow
To wet the lips of friends.
Then once again, before we part,
My empty glass shall ring;
And he that has the warmest heart
Shall loudest laugh and sing.
You Are Old, Father (extract) William by Lewis Carroll
“You are old, father William,” the young man said,
“And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head —
Do you think, at your age, it is right?”
“In my youth,” father William replied to his son,
“I feared it would injure the brain;
But now that I’m perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again.”
Grandpapa (extract) by Harry Graham
Dear Grandpapa – I see him yet,
My friend, philosopher and guide, too,
A personality, once met,
One could not possibly forget,
Though lots of people tried to –
Founder of a distinguished line,
And worthy ancestor of mine!
